The American Music Awards Nominations: Hey, Did You Know Adele Sold A Lot Of Albums This Year?

October 12, 2011

You can have your Grammys and your Mercury Prizes and your Polaris Prizes and whatever other musical prizes honor things like “talent” and “artistry”—the most honest awards show in pop music, though, is undoubtedly the American Music Awards, the annual exercise in silliness that figures out its nominee pool via metrics like sales and “social-networking activity” and calls each category “Favorite” instead of “Best” and puts its weight behind that claim by throwing open the voting process to the unwashed texting masses. Which is why last year Justin Bieber took home a lot of hardware, and why this year he probably has the Favorite Male Pop Or Rock Artist award on lock as well. (If only the show’s producers had determined the evening’s performers this way—we’d have all been spared Gavin Rossdale’s horrifying attempt to channel Marc Bolan while Carlos Santana noodled beside him.) This year’s nominees were announced this morning, and it probably shouldn’t be too surprising that Adele is dominant, what with her being the record-sales-related story of 2k11 and all. Full list of nominees after the jump. Note that the New Artist award has a couple of nice left-field nominees (Miguel, Marsha Ambrosius), although there’s no way LMFAO doesn’t shuffle off with the prize.